A Daydreamer » health research

Some People Are “Dreaming” When It Comes to Their Health

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:26:41 +0000

Have you seen the comedy, “The Castle”? In it, the lead character likes to buy odd things and keep or resell them, and when something is ridiculously overpriced, he exclaim, “He’s dreamin’!” As a chiropractor, I unfortunately meet a lot of people who are dreamin’ when it comes to their health. They keep hoping that a new drug, or a new combination of old drugs, will finally make them healthy again! But, new medical “breakthroughs” can’t reverse years of health abuses. And, often, the “mix and match” approach to “symptom relief” is often quite dangerous. A case in point, a new study has found that older adults on blood pressure drugs known as calcium channel blockers could suffer dangerous drops in blood pressure if they are given certain antibiotics like erythromycin (brands like E-Mycin) or clarithromycin (Biaxin).

I say that it’s important to take good care of one’s health in general, lose the weight and get exercise to lower blood pressure, so that if and when there is a “true emergency” like an infection, taking it won’t lead to needlessly dangerous results!

Source: Reuters

Technorati Tags: antibiotics, blood pressure, good health, healthy lifestyle, pharmaceuticals

Pain: A Daydream or A Nightmare?

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:39:20 +0000

If pain is “real,” why do placebos work sometimes? Good question! As a chiropractor, I treat a lot of people who are in a lot of pain. I have worked with people who were experiencing excruciating back pain and I’ve treated people who “should have” felt a lot of pain considering the condition of their spine, who weren’t. Pain tolerance differs greatly between people, and that is why I always ask my patients to pinpoint the level of pain they are feeling on a scale from 1 to 10. Could it be that pain may be “all in our heads.? A recent study appearing in the journal Science has revealed that the “placebo effect” goes right down to the spine, i.e., the spine is capable of regulating pain by dampening pain signals.

Through the use of fMRI, German researchers studied changes in spinal cord activity when individuals believed that they had been given an anesthetic rather than a placebo. They found that simply believing a pain treatment was effective actually dampened pain signaling in a region of their spinal cord, called the dorsal horn, suggesting a powerful biological mechanism was at work.

Traditionally, experts have viewed the effect of placebos as psychological, but the new research is the latest study to show evidence that there is an important physical component. The researchers found that the placebo effect is particularly strong when treating central nervous system conditions, like depression and pain.

For more on the researchers and their fascinating study, go to: reuters.com

Technorati Tags: back pain, pain, placebo effect

The Whole Person Phenomenon

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:40:31 +0000

Fifteen years ago when I was attending chiropractic college near Atlanta, Georgia, a fellow student shared with me that had doctor had discovered a small tumor in one of her breasts. I asked her what she intended to do about it. After all, we’d just spent two years studying the amazing powers of chiropractic treatment, but there was nothing in what we’d learned that indicated that it had any efficacy in eliminating tumors. She said, to my surprise, that she’d decided to “leave it alone for now,” even though her doctor told her that she was “dreaming” if she thought that the tumor would just disappear. So, a recent paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association, and reported in the New York Times online, was particularly exciting for me. The paper noted findings, over a period of two decades, that indicated that many small tumors would likely not be a problem if they were left alone, undiscovered by screening. It stated, in fact, that many of these small tumors were destined to stop growing on their own or shrink, or even, at least in the case of some breast cancers, disappear.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that cancers require more than mutations to progress,” said Dr. Barnett Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. “They need the cooperation of surrounding cells and even,” he said, “the whole organism, the person.” He said that the immune system or hormone levels, for example, can squelch or fuel a tumor.

Cancer cells and precancerous cells are so common that nearly everyone by middle age or old age is riddled with them, according to Thea Tlsty, a professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. She said that that fact was discovered in autopsy studies of people who died of other causes, with no idea that they had cancer cells or precancerous cells. They didn’t have large tumors or symptoms of cancer. “The really interesting question,” Dr. Tlsty said, “is not so much why do we get cancer as why don’t we get cancer?”

For much more on these exceptional findings, go to nytimes.com. My friend, by the way? She’s a happy, healthy chiropractor in Los Angeles, California, these days, and the mother of a beautiful two-year-old girl!

Technorati Tags: breast cancer, prostate cancer, research